Why Blood Elves will NEVER be neutral, and High Elves will NEVER be alliance.

TL;DR:

Two Reasons:

It would cause a shift in demographics from Horde to the Alliance, and since Horde is already in the minority this would be bad. How many? I predict best case scenario 1 in 4 Blood Elves would go Alliance on PVE and RP servers. Slightly less on PvP servers. Slightly more on RP servers than on normal PVE.

They would be boring. Scarcely even a reskin, no new lore. Unless something dramatic happens to the High Elf population to change them

Before Burning Crusade, faction balance leaned slightly toward the Alliance. Hard to dig up statistics from that era, but I do remember that back then it wasn't huge, but somewhere between 40/60 and 45/55 with the bigger number being Alliance

The top two played races are humans and blood elves. Blood elves have a neutral faction that works with the alliance, thus making them a possible candidate for the Alliance. There is no faction equivalent for the humans.

Third most popular race is Night Elves - the only Elf option for the Alliance.

Horde Segregation - Spend a day on any RP server and you'll find that Blood Elves are almost completely segregated in their own communities. It's not hard to find Horde players who hate Blood Elves for ruining the savage image of the horde. During the 2011 Blizzcon, the guest star of the L90ETC told the crowd that he thought Blood Elves were... well very many not nice words that would probably get me banned. But if you're curious about that incident look up Corpsegrinder 2011 Blizzcon incident.

Just look at how many threads people make saying they want to be high elves on the Alliance.

Blizzard didn't like making a neutral race.

Counter Arguments

Originally Posted by Fancyfeast

If the most popular Horde race were opened to the Alliance, invariably a number of them would migrate to Alliance, which would pad the Alliance's numbers, and being that Alliance is the lesser played faction, it would further balance the factions.

Debunked: Current populations place horde at ~46% of total population. With only a 1% deviation between US and EU servers.

Originally Posted by Wyrt

Well, the thing is is that it counts characters even if people don't play them anymore. For example, it probably counts my blood elf priest I haven't played since the start of Cata.

Debunked
Not hard to test that. I just used realmpop to filter out any characters below 88.

We end up with a ratio of 48% Horde to 52% Alliance Overall.

Top Horde Race:
Blood Elves again, at a perfect %30
Top Alliance Races:
Alliance, humans at %33 and Night Elves at %20

Originally Posted by hrugner

Faction balance has never been that important to Blizzard.

Originally Posted by Chromu

First: blizzard gives a jack for faction balance - there are plenty of unbalanced realms to prove that.

Debunked: One of the major reasons for Virtual/Consolidated Realms was to address faction imbalances and low populations. They've intentionally worked to pair servers together to fix faction imbalances. This was also one of the contributing reasons toward Blood Elves going to the horde in the first place. Also consider how often they've bent over backward to make sure things are even: Near Equal number of quests (Cataclysm was full of mirroring quests to fix imbalances in old zones), and giving Worgen mounts when they didn't need them just to make people happy.

Originally Posted by Chromu

Second: If you take a close look on your race %, you will note that the Horde has a more balanced race spread (30% elf, 15% tauren, 17% undead, 14% orc, 12% troll). Alliance has a huge gap between the races (30% humans, 19% nelf, 13% Worgen/draenei, 8.5% gnomes).

Not an argument: This is a great factoid but I don't think it's a pro-high elves point. If anything I think it's pretty odd that Blood Elves, a minor race that barely fits in with the horde, has the same percentage of players as the main race of the alliance.

Originally Posted by Chromu

Third: not all people play a race because they have cool looks. A good chunk of humans are humans because of pvp racial.

Debatable: On RP servers most people pick over looks. Increasingly we've also seen websites like icy-veins and noxxic say racials hardly matter in PVE. Then there's PvP. You'd expect players to favor Alliance because of some great pvp racials - but on PvP servers we see the balance tip toward more horde players.

Originally Posted by Chromu

I am not sure blizzard didn't like the idea of a neutral race, because as it seems pandas are evenly spread between Alliance and the Horde.

Valid Point
Let's break it down by server type:RPpvp + PVP:
58% HordeRP + PVE
61% Alliance
Ultimately if this "unbalances" factions, it would be great for PvP servers because it might make them more even. On PVE servers though, they swing even further toward the Alliance than the average, so it could be devastating. Is fixing one worth ruining the other?

Lore trumps gameplay!

Debatable
This is a big one. It's pretty hard to say what Blizzard's stance is on that. Over the years they've gone back and forth a lot.

Many who argue that Blood Elves are friendlier to the Alliance today are ignoring the plot developments in MoP. After the Dalaran purge a lot of Blood Elves have reconfirmed their belief that the Horde is the better of two evils. Thunder Isle resolidified their stance in the Horde and we finally got to see their faction leader in action - and in my opinion, finally made blood elves seem kind of badass.

Blizzard has walked a fine line between gameplay and lore. Dwarf Shaman and Troll Druids are not the same types as the rest of the classes available, but the lore could be stretched and the gameplay needed some new life in old races. If High Elves were needed on the Alliance, lore could be written to change blood elf stances. However as it stands, there's no need for it and currently Blood Elves hate the Alliance.

You're forgetting the Highborne.

Highborne are not High Elves. High Elves are descended from the Highborne, but the Highborne did not evolve along the same route as the High Elves eventually did. The only genetic differences we'd see in Highborne is probably some inbreeding. They did not become diurnal, they didn't get immortality, and they didn't interact with humans. They're closer to night elves than high elves.

Some Other Great Points Made By Other Posters:

Originally Posted by Ostrich

I just don't understand why High Elves are such a popular candidate for a new playable race. Even if High Elves had a completely different model from the Blood Elves, they would still be really similar in appearance because they are the same race just with political and minor physical differences. Their lore is interesting but it's mostly the same lore as the Blood Elves'. Adding them as a subrace to Night Elves would be fine, and probable in the future, but their own unique race would just be really boring and uninspired.
It would be nice if High Elves were more involved in the game because they have always been important members of the Alliance lore-wise, and Night Elves being able to be mages opened up doors for High Elves being able to be more involved, but that doesn't mean they have to be a new playable race. Honestly I'd rather see Alliance get Murlocs/Gorlocs over High Elves, at least that would bring something new rather than a third elf race that's nearly identical to one we already have (even if it's on the opposing faction)

Originally Posted by Imnick

Don't forget: a third race of elves would be lazy as fuck and incredibly boring

Originally Posted by Lumineus

...giving Alliance yet another lame race with little to no story to be swept under the rug after the starting zone would be like shooting themselves in the foot with a bazooka after their failures with Draenei and Worgen...

My conclusion is this:
Blizzard will never make blood elves neutral, and high elves will never be an alliance option. The reason for this is because it would destroy faction balance. I do not believe that every Blood Elf would go Horde, but I do believe we would see anywhere from 5-7.5% make the change to Alliance. We would not see any Alliance player making the change to Horde because that wouldn't be an option to them. The only way to balance that further would be if an Alliance faction went neutral - and with current in-game politics there's no reason for any of them to.

You can now link this whenever someone makes one of those "Blood Elves should be neutral!" "High Elves should be playable for Alliance" threads, and then type /thread.

My Wager:

If Blood Elves become a neutral faction, or high elves become a race of the alliance I will upload pictures of and film myself taking off my socks after a hard day of work, and then eat them.

Disqualifications:
For some lore reason High Elves mutate into something weird.
The option as a 'subrace' to humans or night elves limited to certain class combinations. (If there is no limitation, I might as well eat my socks.

If the most popular Horde race were opened to the Alliance, invariably a number of them would migrate to Alliance, which would pad the Alliance's numbers, and being that Alliance is the lesser played faction, it would further balance the factions.

Your argument makes absolutely no sense. I agree BElves will never go neutral and it's extremely unlikely that High Elves will ever be playable, but not for your nonsense reasons.

If the most popular Horde race were opened to the Alliance, invariably a number of them would migrate to Alliance, which would pad the Alliance's numbers, and being that Alliance is the lesser played faction, it would further balance the factions.

Your argument makes absolutely no sense. I agree BElves will never go neutral and it's extremely unlikely that High Elves will ever be playable, but not for your nonsense reasons.

I'm not holding out much serious hope that Alliance HE will happen, even if I want them. That said, server by server populations vary wildly. I don't believe your Horde vs Alliance population argument is as strong as you think.

If the most popular Horde race were opened to the Alliance, invariably a number of them would migrate to Alliance, which would pad the Alliance's numbers, and being that Alliance is the lesser played faction, it would further balance the factions.

Your argument makes absolutely no sense. I agree BElves will never go neutral and it's extremely unlikely that High Elves will ever be playable, but not for your nonsense reasons.

I don't think his reasons are specifically why they will never be neutral, but I certainly wouldn't consider them to be "nonsense" - assuming his sources are accurate, how can mathematical facts be nonsense? Alliance DOES have slightly more players, contrary to your beliefs, and a Horde-only faction become dual-faction can only shift the numbers towards the Alliance. If Alliance players wanted a Horde Blood Elf, they would have one now. The only potential change is people currently Horde going Alliance for an Ally BE, therefore the already higher Alliance numbers would increase, whether it's a dramatic increase of a negligible one.

Either way, it's certainly not nonsense and it seems a bit ridiculous to call someone else's points "nonsense" while at the same time blurting out "facts" that are proven incorrect by the simplest google search.

They've intentionally worked to pair servers together to fix faction imbalances.

Except, they've even said that when they're pairing servers together their primary concern is finding suitable servers to pair and faction balance isn't something they aim for, it just happens when it can.

"Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it." - Ayn Rand

Except, they've even said that when they're pairing servers together their primary concern is finding suitable servers to pair and faction balance isn't something they aim for, it just happens when it can.

No. What was said is that it's something they do take into consideration but realm types trump faction balance because they can't combine pvp and pve servers.

Originally Posted by Seefer

Corpsegrinder isn't the lead singer for L90etc

No one said he was. Reading comprehension fail.

The post that Blizzard banned me for:

2014-11-28 19:55:26 [Trade - City] Potassiumgluconate: female dwarf butts are the best thing that this expansion has given us.